Fire, Ice and Steam
by greygreenwolf
Summary: Northern Ireland's always seen his brother's as fire and ice. He just wonders sometimes if he's merely the steam between them.


Northern Ireland often wonders if his brothers see themselves as fire and ice.

As far as he's concerned, it isn't a great leap of the imagination. He's always seen Ireland as the fire in his life and England as the ice, ever since he was small. Observations of their interactions from then on merely confirmed the theory.

True, he hadn't been around for most of their history, but he could imagine what had happened from the stories that were sometimes whispered drunkenly to him by Scotland or Wales. England and Ireland refuse to talk about it. To him, at least.

* * *

He can picture the first time they truly 'fought' well.

Part of him hesitates to see it as a fight between his brothers; with England bonded to Normandy like a dog, he sees it more like a struggle between two equals- one chained, one free. Nevertheless. It was an invasion, invited by one of Ireland's own. Ironic, in a way.

This meeting's always pictured as the first encroaching of a glacier. Slow and unstoppable, England manages to cut his way through the scattered, fighting flames of the clans. Some bow and make agreements. Others are quashed out.

Ireland still burns, though. Northern Ireland can't see him bowing quite yet.

* * *

He would bow the next time, battered, bruised and beaten. The years and relationship between the first invasion and the genocide he imagines happening next are always somewhat blurred in the young nation's eyes. But he can imagine Cromwell and all the man entails.

Ireland burns fiercely at this point. He would be the last desperate camp fire to guard against a blizzard promising an Ice Age. Some of his brother's people, Northern Ireland once read, even taunted that taking them would be harder than taking hell. The truth is that hell is aflame, and lowering the temperature will cause it to go out and become damp.

And Ireland's flame is all but out with the slaughter of a third of his people. One can't have fire without fuel. He begged in the end, with at least two of his Counties surrendering. Northern Ireland can see him looking up at the little brother he once loved, and seeing nothing but a foreign coldness.

"_What do you fight for, brother?"_

"_Pro Deo, Pro Rege, Pro Hibernia Unanimis."_

It was the wrong answer. So thus winter came.

* * *

Ireland's third fire isn't one that Northern Ireland wants to think about. He sees it as the flames that engulf a plague house, both terrible and a relief.

This fire was a response to the ice looking unstable; to the great cliffs turning on the head that lead them. Had this fire won, he knew in his heart that he wouldn't exist.

Part of him wants to kick himself for being glad that the ice cracked and shed the defective sheets, burying the flames once again. Ireland's still his brother, even if his loyalty is to England.

_(He thinks this is why he never sleeps on the 12__th__ of July. Too many conflicting emotions. Never mind the riots.)_

* * *

The fourth time he pictures them meeting, ice encases the sky whilst flames burn beneath it. A majority would be controlled, yet he can see the flaring of a few wildfires every now and then. They shoot out pillars of flames, leaving smoke marks on the ceiling and whispering names into the ear of history before they're brought under control by the ice cracking and falling into the flames to put them out.

'_Tone. Sheares. Emmet. Neilson. MacNevin. O'Connor. Bond. Russel. Tandy. Lawless. Harvey. Fitzgerald. _Remember_.'_

They die, and Ireland once again looks at his brother's feet as ice burn wracks his body. But this time, the flame smoulders in resistance. The kindling of resistance has been laid. And this wood's dry.

* * *

Fire number five is one born of desperation. People may not live without food, but bodies make fuel as good as any when nothing else can be consumed. This is the fire that gutters in the ruins of a wrecked out building, lit, but for how long no one knows. England is hard. Ice is unfeeling and looks upon green lands with dislike.

"_We're starving, Sansa!"_

"_The famine is a punishment from God for an idle, ungrateful and rebellious country; an indolent and un-self-reliant people. Go home, Ireland."_

The seeds of hatred are given ice water as they germinate, the heat making them take root in the heart of a man beaten too much, too hard, too often. He flares upwards, but once again is beaten down.

The kindling has been lit, though. And the ice is starting to melt. Even if it is just tiny drips.

It's a start. Belfast wasn't built in a day, after all.

* * *

It's perhaps the sixth flame which establishes something constant. Ironic, really, but it isn't only fed by the green this time. Fuel from abroad is added, as well as lumps of coal uncovered from the ice itself. It's organised; the fire of a signal flame across the land… and yet it's still beaten when one has water poured on one of them. No message gets through.

But this time, the flame starts to burn on the ice too. And maybe, just maybe, the faint trickles become a stream. For the first time in many years, green eyes meet blue over a table rather than steel.

"_Home rule."_

"_I'll think about it."_

* * *

Northern Ireland remembers the next meeting of fire and ice personally. Ireland burns now, a great conglomeration that's impossible to put out, no matter how much water England desperately pours on the flames. He may as well be pouring oil.

It's only now that the country born from the fear of a majority in a small part living as a minority of the overall island understands what he saw that day. Two men shaking hands as the winter ice finally melts over the fire, leaving cracks throughout the entire glacier. Winter appears to be over.

It doesn't stop the fight in the London alley an hour later, though. From the bruises, Northern Ireland can tell that it was fierce, but the child only came running at the sound of sobs. Two brothers, clinging on at last as they let themselves see what's been done in their names. Fire and Ice at last at equilibrium.

Even then, it doesn't stop the conglomeration. A fire fights between itself when it feels the need, and England can only look on hopelessly as he tries to lend his support where he can.

"_Are you quite alright, Ireland?"_

"_Aye. How's the boy?"_

* * *

Equilibrium is, perhaps, not the best word to use, Northern Ireland thinks to himself in the dark of his bedroom. It's ever changing, so the phrase dynamic equilibrium is perhaps better.

In his heart and on his body, he knows that that explanation covers it all. Irish and British at the same time, and he sometimes thinks that the effort will kill him. Or, it will if a bullet doesn't first. It's 1985, and a dangerous time to not know which side you support.

_Catholic? Protestant? Republican? Unionist? IRA? Orangeman? What are you? And will the answer get you through the roadblock (Legal? Illegal?) alive?_

It feels like his heart's being ripped asunder, and it's all he can do to keep himself from cursing his brothers. They made _this_ happen.

Yet, at the same time, he's thankful for the cool chest he's leaning on, as well as for the hot one that curls around his back. Ireland always did sleep warm, rendering England cool in comparison. Maybe this was what made him, lying in a blitz triggered fever as he was, decide what each brother was to him.

The night's warm for May, and having the blanket on would have been stifling. Northern Ireland's glad they kicked it off. He enjoys the feel of the breeze dancing over his body, even if the smell of smoke isn't welcome at all.

Nightmares are what drive the three brothers into the same bed. The gesture's purely brotherly; Northern Ireland feels sick whenever someone suggests that it isn't. They don't see each other that way. It's just that Shamus and Arthur worry about Patrick, and if the only way he doesn't wake up panting and wide eyed with threats and gunshots still going through his head is to share a bed… so be it. There's no skin off their nose, no matter how embarrassing the first half dozen times were.

But here, in his cocoon of blonde ice and brown fire, Northern Ireland at last feels safe. It doesn't matter about the civil war; it doesn't matter about the constant military presence; it doesn't even matter that there are days when he feels nothing but hatred towards one or the other of them.

Safe. At last.

* * *

Ireland and England are fire and ice, their relationship as destructive and volatile as the reaction between the two fundamental elements.

And Northern Ireland… Well. He sometimes wonders if he's nothing more that the steam thrown up between them.

* * *

Because metaphors are fun to play with. =P

Since I'm lazy, you can look up the history yourselves.

The first bit is Strongbow, the second Cromwell, the third is the rising with James II, fourth is United Irishmen, Fifth is the Famine and Young Ireland, sixth is the Fenians, seventh is the civil war/fight for independence and it's all told during The Troubles.

Oh, and if you can tell me where the two quotes I've stolen from history's from, I'll be very impressed.

This is why you don't read _A Song of Ice and Fire _and watch Fullmetal Alchemist at the same time guys. It comes out like this.

Cheers for reading,

-Green.


End file.
